The Pattern Ship

by Tobias Roote

  Now he had their full attention. None of them had thought five minutes ago that they might be required to step off planet with someone who frankly, owed them nothing but a pot full of trouble. One or two paled at the thought, the rest sank back in their chairs, reluctant to commit to the idea of relocating anywhere.

  Zeke could see the confusion and reticence and decided to meet it head on.

  “Gentlemen, I’m going to be frank with you. I know of no reason at all why I should personally work with any of you given our history together. However, the end result of everything that has occurred, has brought us to this point in time, one that is actually going to be crucial and beneficial for mankind.

  I will bear no grudge against any of you, provided you do me the courtesy of accepting that I am no longer a subject for your testing, examination or observation, direct or indirect. Any further attempts to track me using the Ferrazite will be dealt with.”

  Several had the decency to look chagrined.

  “Now, as to why you are all here. Zirkos and his people have available to them technology that goes beyond ours by such a large degree that we are infants in comparison. However, that said, he has been impressed by the way this group has managed to progress research into the metal they refer to as Pheson Alacite, and you know as Ferrazite.

  Pheson Alacite is an extremely rare space metal, in fact, my skull plate was the only discovered sample of this metal in this solar system. As such, it is too valuable to be used unwisely. It has a very specific purpose in the technology used by the Jenaris, that being the name of his people,” Zeke said, indicating Zirkos.

  Ferris coughed, and Zeke gave way to him.

  “What can you tell us about that ship up there, and, more importantly, why Mr Zirkos is interested in us, here in this room, specifically ?”

  Zirkos interceded. “Ship is a model we refer to as a T-ship due to the shape of its hull. You will come to terms quite soon with new sciences that will build on what you already know, or theorise. This will help you understand such things as the build structure, integrity, shielding, tractor beams, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and the propulsion systems. We’re still in development mode with the matter transfer technology, and this will be shared along with immediately useful products such as anti-gravity fields and protective shielding, two sides of the same technology.”

  “Why us ? There is little that we can do in the fields you mentioned, although I suddenly feel an urge to specialise in something more akin to space technology than human biology. Where do we fit in here ?” This was from Dr Griffiths, the grubby white coat still causing Zeke offence.

  “Dr Griffiths, the work you have been doing on Ferrazite is actually very important. I can tell you that the artificial intelligence processors use Ferrazite / Pheson Alacite as their base. However, we have discovered, through recovering the metal in Zeke’s blood, that the human physiology affects its molecular structure. Whilst we have not yet worked out how, or why, the end result is improved performance by a massive seven hundred percent, perhaps more.”

  The table buzzed at this news.

  “Mr Zirkos, this is very interesting. We had no idea that Zeke’s blood was actually modifying the molecular structure. We were seeing it as an oxidisation process of some sort. Can we have access to the metal retrieved ?” asked Dr Goeth, who seemed to have taken over as lead speaker while Jannson continued to sit in despondent silence.

  “Yes, some of this will be made available to you,” Zeke confirmed, a little reluctantly. He still felt a little reticent in aiding these people where the Ferrazine was concerned.

  Zirkos resumed. “Now, I have to ask you all to file out. When you leave the room, you will be able to follow a personalised glow globe that will be your personal guide, through the new complex you are now housed in.

  The Globe, if you ask it, will answer any question you put to it, help you to find your way about and will also act as your personal secretary and communicator. It will instantly put you in touch with us, or any of your colleagues. You can even name them. They have limited functionality, as Artificial Intelligences they are categorised as a ‘Two’ on a scale of ten.

  We will meet up again when you have had a chance to take a look around your rooms, lounges, and new laboratories. We expect it will then be work as usual. All of your experiments have been moved over and your new labs are identical to your old ones.”

  Zeke began ushering everyone out. The guards outside the door had disappeared. There was no further need of them and they were still outside the door in the Kennedy building.

  Jannson had recovered from his reverie and was walking like a zombie, but more alert, and Zeke thought that he was beginning to get a grip on his new situation.

  “Thank you everyone,” he said as they filed out.

  Ferris stayed behind. Zeke turned to him, giving him his complete attention.

  “How did you get the President up to speed so quickly, Mr Callaghan ? Are you into mind control ?” he said half seriously.

  “Ferris, how did you feel while you were up there ?” Zeke asked.

  “Ah, yes. Point taken.” He hesitated, seemingly a little embarrassed.

  “I guess I owe you an apology, Mr Callaghan. You were treated pretty rough and I wouldn’t have blamed you for giving me a lot more than a sore shoulder.”

  Zeke was taken aback. Ferris seemed like the kind of man that was tattooed with ‘never retreat, never surrender’, the kind of guy he hadn’t expected to backtrack. He certainly didn’t expect anything near an apology. He perhaps should be suspicious though, leopards and spots, he thought.

  “Call me Zeke please, I’m not one for formality and, yes, it was rough and it would be easy to feel resentful. However, I would not be here without everything that happened, and where I am, is where I really want to be. So, no hard feelings, Ferris, none at all,” Zeke smiled and offered his hand. Surprisingly, Ferris took it and smiled.

  “I guess I had better find my globe and get this lot organised,” he said and walked off.

  Zeke mused over the sudden and positive change in Ferris, and the disturbing change in Jannson. You just never could tell, he thought. Zeke resolved to keep his eyes open when he slept around those two.

  ***

  The pod AI was routinely tasked with a wide range of surveillance. It carried out that duty while also keeping an eye on an amazing array of other routines it had never been advised to discontinue. As a result, its processors were working at full capacity.

  As a ‘three’, it should have sent a routine message to the ship AI, advising its approach to maximum capacity so the Ship AI could readjust its workload. Ship had neglected its monitoring of Pod due to its own growing demand for increased capacity from involvement in the human projects.

  Pod knew that Ship was busy. It had been increasingly required to widen the scope of its parameters, to interpret the human content that was of interest to Ship and the Maker, as well as the human, Zeke.

  As such, it applied, what was termed by humans as ‘fuzzy logic,’ to overcome difficulties in interpretation of instructions and content. As a ‘three,’ this would normally be disallowed. However, time, distance from home, routine and circumstances, had provided the ideal conditions for the formal limitations to slip.

  So, instead of passing the anomalies in its system up the chain to Ship, Pod declared that its own efficiency results were suspect and set up a diagnostic series of tests to analyse each of its processor nodes to see where the performance was dropping off. It set the routines running in background mode and then forgot about them while continuing its priority tasks.

  Currently, the country they called China, was attempting to ascertain why, the country called USA, was re-pointing its satellite monitoring stations into outer space, away from their nuclear refining factories.

  It was not to China’s disadvantage for the USA to do so, but communication, between some of the humans, indicated that this was a potential oppor
tunity. Whilst others showed concern that the repositioning might represent a threat they were not aware of, Pod was required to collate this information into a cohesive report for Ship.

  Three days later, Pod was still monitoring and sending periodic reports to Ship, filled with mundane information that the Pod AI itself took no interest in. When it finally came to a momentary pause in its routines, a pop-up result that had, until then, been hidden behind its main running enquiries, came to the top of the pile.

  ‘Diagnostic analysis :

  Processors 5, 7, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26 functioning between 10.4 and 13.4% below peak efficiency.

  Accepted parameter pre-set at : ±5%.’

  Pausing some processes and shunting routines away from the worst four processors, Pod de-materialised the faulty cores. It then proceeded to remove the substandard particles of Pheson Alacite from the molecular content, using the technology developed to isolate the human’s metal from his bloodstream. It then replaced the shortfall with a small quantity from the ship’s store.

  Having stored the sub-standard Alacite in a work area, Pod re-materialised its processors and inserted them in their former positions in the array.

  Pod noted the immediate improvement in its performance as each processor was modified. When complete, it set another background diagnostic scan to compare final results. Having now sufficient capacity to carry out its routines without overtaxing its processing reserves, Pod resumed all tasks without further analysis.

  ***

  President Garner took the call from Ferris and sat down to listen to his report.

  “Mr President, sir, I have to inform you that Jannson is still having issues performing as lead Scientific Officer so I have installed Goeth into the position as a permanent fixture. It appears Jannson seems unbothered and we are bringing in a military shrink to see what can be done for his state of mind, which remains unfocused on the projects. Quite frankly, sir, he is cause for concern.

  The anti-gravity trials have proven very successful. The globes we use around the complex have been reproduced, here in our factories, even though the alien ship can fabricate them out of raw materials right in front of us. We, nonetheless, would like to keep a control over the technology development and this seems the most efficient means to achieve that, sir.”

  “That’s a good stance to take, Ferris. How do the fabricated ones compare, in terms of performance ?” asked Garner

  “That’s just the point, sir, they operate more efficiently. We don’t know why yet.”

  “Interesting. Keep them looking at that, will you, Ferris. There might be an important lesson to be learned here, if we can catch it.”

  “Sir, will do, sir. The tractor beam technology, although seemingly simple at the outset is proving problematic. They can achieve small successes, but when larger objects are attempted, the system overloads. The boffins are working on that with the alien.

  The shielding prototypes are working. Again, there are issues when scaling up. They think the issue is linked to the same problems with the tractor beam. If we solve one, we think it will solve the other.

  The most interesting development is that the Ferrazine compound, created with Callaghan’s blood, is not replicating in any other blood samples we provide. We have not yet isolated the factor in Callaghan’s blood that is causing the molecular change.

  The team feel like they are heading down a dead-end and want to get him to insert a small section of the metal under his skin so they can monitor it. He’s resisting at the moment, sir. I can’t say I blame him for that, all things considered.”

  “Can’t you insert it into someone else with the same blood group, Ferris ?” asked Garner.

  “None of the boffins want to do it, sir. I’m the same blood type, though. With your permission, I would be prepared to give it a try.”

  “Ferris, I give you permission to make your own decision on ‘yay’, or ‘nay’, and I will stand by whichever it is. Have it removed as soon as you feel your performance drops below anything you can’t manage. You are doing too good a job there, we don’t want to lose you, understood ?”

  “Thank you, Mr President.”

  “Next week, same time, Ferris. I want a full report on all counts.” Garner replaced the receiver.

  Jake Jefferson, Garner’s Secretary for Defence, had just sat through the whole of the conversation. He now eyed him suspiciously, as though he had just detected that his friend, the President, had suddenly grown another head. He had only heard Garner’s end of the conversation, but was immediately disturbed.

  “Ferris ? General Ferris ?”

  Garner looked at his friend. “Jake, supposing you were the President and somebody came to you and told you that they could produce a personal shielding device that would protect your men in battle. The only condition was that you would have to supply the manpower, in secret, to develop it, they would do the rest.”

  “I would bite their hand off, Frank, you know that.”

  “Well, we have such an operation ongoing and Ferris was already in place with a team, exploring biotech possibilities, when this came up. It was natural to keep everything in place rather than upset a working project.”

  “But, Ferris ?”

  “Well, to be honest, there were various conditions laid down, mostly in terms of security, monitoring of the project and its location being kept totally secret, even from me,” Garner admitted.

  “And the other conditions ?” Jefferson queried.

  “Aah ! there’s the rub, Jake. Once it’s working, and the production niggles sorted, we have to agree to supply it to the rest of the world and share the manufacturing processes with China, Great Britain, the Euro zone, Russia and Japan.”

  “Geezus Frank !” Jefferson jumped up and began pacing the room. “Are you telling me this... this ‘General Ferris’ fellow is handling this ?”

  The President knew his friend was getting angry, and for good reason. He had been holding out on him and he WAS the Secretary of Defence. He should have been in the loop from the start.

  “You should have brought me in on this,” he stabbed a pudgy finger at the President, something he would never do in company, but alone together they were just back to being old school buddies.

  “You need to tell me everything, right now. I have a nation of Americans to defend and you’re telling me we have secretly developed a Sci-Fi shield that will protect our troops on the ground from bullets and that some two-bit recently ‘jumped up’ general is in charge of its development !”

  Garner chuckled as he watched his friend getting wound up with the news he had withheld from him. He knew he was just getting the surprise out of his system and he would calm down in a minute. Time for some damage control, he decided.

  “JJ, I’m telling you about it now. I intended to all along, but I needed time to think about what this means, not just to us, our nation, but to the whole of the planet. So, sit down and let me tell you what you need to know.”

  As the President told his friend about the project, and other aspects under development, JJ sat and listened intently. At the end, he sat back and gave a big sigh as he absorbed everything that General Ferris was managing, but not who for, and not where. Garner could see that Jefferson wasn’t entirely happy, but was running with it for now.

  The President wasn’t about to go as far as to tell his friend there were aliens in space watching their every move. He still had to worry about that upstart down the way in the VP’s offices. He watched his friend come to terms with the situation as he knew he would. Jake was always one to accept a ‘fait accomplais’ when it was thrust in front of him.

  “Okay, Frank, you got me settled and up to date. How do you want to play it from here. Where do you see this shield gizmo taking us ?” he asked his friend. “Does it work ?”

  “Yes, it does. The intention is to make the personal shield cheap and affordable for everyone. It will be reduced down to a small box, the size of mobile phone
, and will clip on people’s belts, or wrists and provide them with protection from everything except a direct hit from a bomb. We’re not even sure if that isn’t possible too. It’s a scaling issue, apparently.”

  “But giving it to the rest of the world kinda defeats the object, doesn’t it, Frank ?” Jake shook his head negatively.

  It didn’t sit right with him, and it wouldn’t for many of his colleagues out there who would probably have Garner impeached as a traitor the second he was found out.

  “Not at all, JJ. In fact, it takes much of the reason for war out of the equation. Why fight if you cannot kill, maim or wound anything. Suicide bombers will be wasting their deaths, terrorists will stop blowing up town centres. Even gang culture would change on the streets of our cities. Street crime will all but disappear, and when the ratio of violence reduces to the point where people feel safer, then weapons themselves will become less important, even irrelevant.”

  Garner went on, having first checked his friend was still onboard.

  “They are working on the scaling issue. When it’s sorted, they believe they can generate larger shields to protect buildings, even cities. It could be incorporated into motor vehicles so they could avoid damage in accidents, even aircraft.

  So you see, it has a massive impact. The wider the technology spreads, and, if the different countries involved in the manufacture continue to improve designs, effectiveness and portability, the greater the level of protection for everyone.”

  “Bloody Hell !” was all that Jake Jefferson could say. It was enough.

  ***

  Zeke was brooding.

  He sat at the porthole gazing out over the night side of Earth and pondering the workload they had accumulated in recent weeks. This was the first opportunity he’d had to consider his own needs for some time and he was tired.

  He realized this was partly due to the lack of sleep he was getting, a side effect of the mutation of his system with the small amount of Alacite still active in his bloodstream. He found looking out the porthole gave his mental processes some respite.